Writings on Time

I've been reading some things I've written in the past on various sites (including the Puritanboard when I was on there) regarding time and higher aspects of time and how that squares with Scripture and so on, and I've been surprised to see how it holds up. It really is a subject that is real for the Bible.

For instance, one aspect of this subject is the whole area of theology dealing with hell.

This is biblical fact: hell as an English word use to mean Hades. That is what it is used for in Bible translations. Hades. Hell though, the English word, came in time to be known for what the Bible calls the lake of fire, or Gehenna. Hades and the final Lake of Fire (or Gehenna, the burning garbage pits outside Jerusalem which is a metaphor for the Lake of Fire) are *different things.*

So the phrase "burn in hell" is inaccurate. You should say, "Burn in the Lake of Fire, oh wicked one!" Say that when you're angry at someone. Just kidding. But it is the Lake of Fire that is the 'hell' we think of as burning and eternal torture and all that. Hell really is a different place called Hades.

Now Hades has two sides to it. The bad side, perhaps called Tartarus, but really just the dark side of Hades. Tartarus is the deepest pit of that side of it. And the good side called Paradise, or Elysium in Greek Mythology.

(In the Old Testament the word sheol is equivalent to Hades.)

Now this is a confusing part that trips up even very astute theologians. After the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ the paradise part of Hades is now where Christ is, in the heavenlies. And Hades itself now is only the dark part. Prior to Jesus' death and resurrection Old Testament saints who died went down to Hades, to the Paradise side of it. But we, regenerate believers, after the death and resurrection of Christ go up to be with Christ. And Christ led those Old Testament saints out of Hades upward when he went down to Hades and ascended out of Hades. That is why the bodies rose from the graves in Jerusalem when Jesus was put to death.

So today it is only unregenerate individuals who go down to Hades when they die. Hades is the abode of departed souls. What they do there the Bible doesn't say. It is not the Lake of Fire. People are judged to the Lake of Fire after the second coming of Christ and the end of time, at the Great White Throne Judgment.

So this is where recurrence comes into play. Living time. Calling it living time is ironic because it is really dead in sin time. Departed souls are still in their living time (dead in sin). And part of that living time is the interval of Hades. We are there NOW too. Because until we die, even though we are believers now, we haven't resurrected up to be with Christ yet. So this is why we are still in Hades in our time-body, and we are at odds with all the others still in Hades too. This is spiritual warfare, to see this.

I take back that last paragraph, because the Bible says once regenerated and a believer we are right now with Christ in the heavenlies. So maybe we aren't even present, spiritually, in Hades anymore, and maybe the friction we get from all who are still there is based on some kind of other recognition of our status that they can discern other than seeing us spiritually with them in Hades now. (Though I have to say, after writing that, that the first resurrection mentioned in Revelation is our resurrection up to Christ when we physically die, so maybe when Paul says we are with Christ now in the heavenlies he means it's a done deal, but not effected until we physically die.) Anyway, I do think part of us is still in Hades right now, but we are changed there and others can discern that change and give us friction, and perhaps others there just wonder at our new status and want if for themselves.

But this - recurrence as living time - explains why we don't feel a need to evangelized like a maniac when we see unbelievers. We know this is all playing out in higher aspects of time. And God regenerates in any part of a person's time. God acts from eternity. We can only discern our lives and other people's lives from a limited perspective of birth to death linear time. And another note on that is: we don't evangelize like maniacs because Christianity doesn't work like that. Christianity works like leaven and the mustard seed. It works from the inside out and from a small manifestation to big. And the influence, the leaven, works all through time, backwards and forwards, up and down, down and up, so to speak; not just one-on-one in person.

God sees our lives from eternity, and He can act in our lives from eternity (at any point in our living time). That doesn't argue for second chancism or universalism (the notion that all will be saved), it just argues for the fact that a person who dies unregenerate isn't necessarily destined for the Lake of Fire. - C.

ps- There's an interesting angle on all this that I haven't nailed down, but it is the question of what determines our point-of-consciousness in this linear time flow of life that we experience? It might be that prior to regeneration we never had a single point-of-consciousness. We were just living all our time-body at all points equally all the time. In a state of sleep. Which would explain the strong sense of fate people have. The unchanging flow of events. But once regenerated, fished up out of the ocean into a new cosmos, blam, we are here. And we mistake this new point-of-consciousness as something we 'must' have had before, but we really didn't. It is new. And it gets strange from here on, because we might not now even *exist* in other parts of our time at this point. We might have already disappeared from all other parts of our time. In other words, my childhood is no longer there. My family no longer is experiencing my presence at the dinner table right now. It's like I just was never born. This might be what people think of as 'rapture.' They think of it too literally, but seen in higher time it is something that is real.

pps- Also, it would follow that once we are disconnected with our old fate that we would have apprehensive thoughts about how we are to survive. Make money, all that. And Jesus directly addresses that. Don't worry, He says. We know what you need. It's not saying, don't make effort, but don't worry like a person still in the world. You are no longer of that world, and we know you have need of food and clothing and so on. This is a subject with endless lines to ponder once you see it and experience it.